Close Watch

A chronicle of the creative adventures of filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Making a Close Up

If you're in London on Tuesday 30th, it's worth noting that Esperanza Collado's programme of Irish experimental film, More or Less Annihilated by Saccadic Enchainment by the Sea, is playing at Close-Up. This is a slightly mutated version of the programme that was screened at the Margenes festival in Madrid last summer. My Making a Home is included in it.

Monday, February 08, 2010

So That Was January...

So now I have to work for two. For me and Soltan Karl. Soltan is my first alter ego (or, if you will, 'heteronym'). He does very short, minimalistic work. He would never create anything longer than five minutes. Simple ideas, but sometimes very dense. His works are concentrated in a way that Le Cain's would never have the confidence to be.

He is the author of the notorious 'Soldeck' videos on Youtube. And I am the author of this author. I hope my friends will forgive my sensationalistic little subterfuge in announcing his existence. But, hey, 'shwobiz' and so on... (In fact, only one person guessed that The Soldeck Cycle -to give the work its proper name- was, shall we say?, created through my agency...)

We have been working very hard over the past six weeks: long, visionary nights of hectic productivity. We hope the videos that we have produced reflect at least some of the intensity of their production.

Le Cain has made two videos, Next and Evening Ascent.

Next explores the profound anxiety and isolation of Heaven on Earth. Fragile, rotting... Evening Ascent proposes a dynamic dialectic between two co-existing, cosmic perceptions of being.

Soltan Karl, in addition to The Soldeck Cycle, has made a number of further works from Super-8 elements subjected to varying degrees of video manipulation, each running between one and four minutes:

The texture of the Super-8 image is crucial to these six works. In addition, Soltan has made a four-video series entitled Night Visions. These are very fleeting tapes that reflect the huge importance of sound in his work.

Le Cain is also close to completing two further videos. To be continued...

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Max Is In For A Lynching

Anyone in Cork who is reading this should set aside this Thursday (February 4th) evening for the screening of two sublime films by David Lynch, The Grandmother and Erasherhead. This is the first of a series of film nights going under the heading 'The Projection Racket'. My film Carve is also screening as 'local support' to the main programme...